All Sweetness and Light
by Cherith
Summary: Bethany has a crush, and decides to act on it.


Bethany knew what her brothers- _brother_ thought of her. How Garrett knew that she was gentle and kind and that when she rested her head on her pillow at night it was with pleasant visions dancing in her head. And never-

Never-

Could he think that she would have so much as even a lascivious thought to call her into the Fade as she slept.

Well, Garrett was half right.

She often went to bed with pleasant thoughts, but they were certainly not wholesome. They might have been once, or at least they had once been less pleasant and more full of darkness and sad memories on their days before Kirkwall. Certainly, there were nights still, where she remembered Carver fondly, without all of Ostagar carried on his shoulders.

Time, and a dark-skinned pirate with a mouth that made her blush in all the right ways (and all the wrong ones, too) had traded her weariness and lonesome nights for pleasant and vivid dreams. She perhaps looked too eagerly to sleep after the dreams of Isabela started. If she had been another girl, just a normal girl, maybe it wouldn't have mattered what, or _who, _was in her dreams. But, the fascination, fueled by the straightforward things that her brother's pirate companion spoke of, made her worry that her dreams might turn into something more worrisome than pleasant dreams, and waking with her hand between her thighs.

Her father had well-warned her of the things that could happen in a mage's dreams. How desire, too strong, too vivid and something so _wanted_, would be like a siren's call in the Fade. That when you felt you needed something so deeply, it was best not to sleep at all for fear the demons would come. They would offer you the thing you most desired and that Desire, was nearly the hardest to resist.

The night she heard Isabela's quick and needy breaths in her ear, and the hand that caressed her breast no longer felt like her own, she worried that it was already over. That Desire had come and she would not be able to refuse.

Only, when she woke, she was still herself and there was still time.

It wasn't as though Isabela herself hadn't suggested it once or twice. Hadn't hinted or teased or given her a look that made her shiver from head to toe.

She had.

It wasn't so hard to get away for an evening, Garrett was out and her mother... well, her mother worried, but it wasn't so far to walk, she said. Just meeting a friend at The Hanged Man. One of Garrett's friends, and they weren't all so bad. No need to worry.

Finding Isabela was even less difficult. Bethany's eyes landed on her before the door was even fully closed behind her. And Isabela, always eager for new adventure and a wary eye forever cast towards the door due because of past adventures, saw her enter soon after. She didn't even have a moment to catch the breath tangled in her throat before Isabela was at her side, a conspiratorial arm thrown over her shoulders and a hip bumped against hers.

"Sweetness, it's lovely to see you, but please tell me you haven't been wandering the big, bad streets of Kirkwall all by your lonesome."

She nodded, because words wouldn't come and Isabela's breath on her cheek was sweeter and warmer than any dream could have been.

"Well, well. Come on then, I'll buy you a drink and you can tell me-" Isabela lowered her arm to grab her wrist and she nearly shook at the touch as she was pulled to a corner table near the back stairs- "why exactly it is you're wandering the streets alone."

There was a mug of ale in her hands before she knew how to say no, or could think it would be better to do this sort of thing on a clear mind. And then, Isabela looked at her, brown eyes twinkling beneath long lashes and she had to take a drink anyway, just to give her a reason to turn away for a moment, to take a breath and hide the pink staining her cheeks.

The drink didn't make her feel bolder, but Isabela did, dropping her normal flirtations for a more serious expression, one of concern and worry that made her chest ache.

"Nothing's happened has it? Everyone is alright, Garrett, your mother?"

"Y-yes. Oh no, nothing has happened," she managed in barely a whisper. Her tongue felt too thick in her mouth and she took another drink, and licked her lips.

"So, that's good." Isabela studied her and it seemed like the other woman studied her a piece at a time, hair and eyes and mouth and shoulders- and the examination was too much. Each part of her under that heavy gaze made her feel both warm and cold and she felt the tell-tale prick of gooseflesh on the back of neck.

"Alright then, you're going to have to tell me," she said with a broad smile. "I'm no good at guessing games after a few drinks."

Bethany nodded again and searched for the courage to just come out with it. All the words she wanted to say seemed to pile up on her tongue and not a one of them would tip over the edge of her lips.

They seemed like such simple things to say: _I've had dreams. Good dreams. Dreams of you._

Instead, she could only manage a question. "D-do you know about the Fade?"

"Enough to know I don't want to go there."

"We- I- _mages_, when we dream... that's where our dreams are."

Isabela nodded, "I've heard something like that before." Her eyes narrowed and then she added, "Have you come to tell me about your bad dreams, sweetness?" She had lowered her voice, that same concern seeping into it, yes something playful still in her eyes, in the lift of her brow.

She shook her head. "Not exactly."

That easy, carefree smile returned and Isabela's hand covered one of hers. She leaned in, jewelry clinking softly. "Good ones, then? Oh, please- do tell."

Every bit of Bethany seemed concentrated in her hand, on the places where Isabela's rough fingertips, calloused from years of knives and ships, touched hers. It was a light touch, harmless, friendly but, when her eyes went to their hands it was a reminder of what magic felt like, like the pleasant tingling of blossoming flames in her palm.

She swallowed. "... The best," she replied, her voice little other than light and breath.

The other woman's smile widened and if such a thing were possible, she thought Isabela might have plucked those dreams right from her head without another word. Her dark hand pressed over Bethany's completely, finger for finger from nail to palm and there was less than a heartbeat between them. Her own heart beat too fast, too strong and the rest of the room faded from view, the whole of her vision encompassed by dark eyes and hair and lips.

"You'll make a girl all light-headed if you keeping looking at me like that," she chuckled.

But, she didn't want to stop. She smiled, her best attempt at something she had seen Isabela do hundreds of time, though admittedly, not all of those had been real. Maybe she should've felt a little ashamed, her, barely twenty years to her name, trying to seduce someone like Isabela.

She didn't.

All it took was a breath, a deep, steady inhalation of air that would never smell or taste nearly as good as it did in that moment. She leaned in, closing the distance with a tilt of her head, the fall of her hair over her shoulders and her lips were on Isabela's. It wasn't the chaste kiss she imagined it would be, either.

She'd had plenty of nights, plenty of dreams, to imagine exactly what that kiss would be like. What it would taste like: ocean and ale, a little sweet and a little not. It was just like that and so much more. Yet, she hadn't known how to imagine the pressure of Isabela's lips on hers until they were there or that Isabela would wrap her fingers around the back of her neck.

There had been nothing in those dreams to prepare her for the salt on her tongue as Isabela's glided against hers, or how their fingers would lace together, palm to knuckles the way they'd been before she'd felt so bold.

Nothing had prepared her for how hard it would be to catch her breath when it was her own again.

Isabela chuckled, her own breath a little ragged, and it was throaty and deep. She didn't have to imagine the weight of fingers and leather against her knee under the table, or the breath that was on her ear a moment later.

"Bethany," the pirate whispered, lips on her ear. It seemed to reverberate in her, all the way down to her toes. "Sweetness, all you had to do was ask."

The other woman was never far away, always within the reach of stretching fingertips. It was like a dream, but not her old dreams- not all the time, not the way she had ached for the other woman. Just, dreamy. Just, pleasant. It was a secret between them, secret, but somehow, simple.

Bethany tried not to marvel at her good fortune.

When she dreamed now, it frightened her less. There was still an urgency, a need and desire for more, but she had what she wanted. What she wanted was only more of Isabela and more time. Always, more time.

Private time with Isabela proved continually hard to come by, so moments were taken wherever they could be found. Hands fumbled under table tops, worked quickly in dark corners paired with mouths and tongues in the moments they could steal away. Bethany felt as though she might never have enough of the other woman.

There were of course, other nights alone, in Isabela's room at The Hanged Man. Nights better than the first one when she had been all trembling hands and heart. But, those nights were few and far between and never last until morning.

If her brother suspected, he said nothing, too wrapped up in his own work and burgeoning relationship. For that too, Bethany was grateful. She suspected that if he knew, the little time that she did have with Isabela would slip away, and she would have only her dreams to keep her company, once more.

It was easiest to get away in the afternoon. A trip to the market could turn into a stop at The Hanged Man and if Leandra laid down for a nap, she had a few hours that she could call her own.

"Sweetness, are those for me?" Isabela grabbed for the small collection of flowers she had clutched in one hand. She loosened her grip so Isabela could take them from her a burst of heat coursing through her, skin turning pink under Isabela's bright grin.

Bethany nodded, dark curls falling over her shoulders and obscuring the worst of the blush in her cheeks. "I was in the market..."

Isabela held up her other hand to stop her, as she pulled the flowers in close under her nose and took a deep breath. Her eyes were closed as she inhaled and gone was the teasing, playful smile and replaced with a musing sigh and a pleased smile, something much more intimate and soft, a look that Bethany was still learning to recognize as something uniquely _hers_.

The flowers were nothing fancy. She hadn't spent any real money on them, just a few copper for the bunch, and she had only grabbed them on a whim. But, the look that greeted her when the other woman opened her eyes again, and her breath stopped fluttering enough that she could pay attention instead of fidgeting with the edges of her tunic enough to _see_, was worth far more than the price of a few flowers.

"Bethany," Isabela said. On her lips, her own name seemed like little more than a whisper, but to her it was like the exhaled breath of the entire ocean, and it sent a shiver through her. Isabela crooked her head as though to examine her and then her fingers were at her sides again, nervous under the scrutiny.

With a quickness that made her head spin, one that she was too slow at learning to anticipate or appreciate, Isabela had her by the hand, and was leading her to the stairs. It was only after they were safely behind the closed door of Isabela's room, that she managed to squeak out, "What? Isabela!"

The flowers were lost in a flurry of hands on laces and tunics, blades and leather. And it wasn't that she was complaining, but between kisses, Bethany wondered aloud, "Was it the flowers?"

Isabela laughed, and Bethany knew this as something different too, even muffled as it was against her skin, it was a laugh Isabela shared only privately. Instead of a true answer, she answered with long tan arms wrapped around her waist, stepping into her and walking her back towards the bed.

"Isabela!" She giggled at a trail laid by lingering fingertips down her belly and swatted the pirate's hand away. "Are you going to tell me?" She put a hand to her hip, even if she felt the gesture lost some of its power when she stood before the other woman in only her smalls.

With shake of her head, Isabela pressed one hand over her mouth and pulled her closer with the other, fingers wrapping around wrist and lips, and Bethany playfully struggled against both. She nipped at the fingertips in front of her, pulled her wrist free from Isabela's grasp even as she moved forward. She followed Isabela onto the bed, knees first and straddling her legs.

"Sweetness," Isabela whispered at last, "you dreamt of me, brought me flowers, steal away moments to come to see me. Sometimes I think you like me too much." Her brow creased as she idly walked one of her hands over a pale arm, finding Bethany's hand and twining their fingers together. "Or I like you not enough."

"That's not true." She wrapped her other hand into Isabela's hair, finding the knot the held her headscarf and loosening it. With her best imitation of one of Isabela's crooked and playful smiles, she said, "I don't think I like you at all, actually."

"Oh, you are a tease."

"Well, I only brought the flowers on a whim. I won't do it again," she said.

"I see," Isabela said, brown eyes calculating beneath a newly fallen curl of hair. "And the dreams?"

"Gone," she answered quickly. "Forgotten. I'm completely done with them." She scooted forward a knee at at time, pressing Isabela back towards the bed.

"Well, then. Perhaps my worries are unfounded and you don't like me well enough at all." She let Bethany lead her back, but raised her free hand and caressed her hip with a thumb in absent-minded circles.

Bethany shook her head and leaning down, pressed a kiss against Isabela's chin. Another went just above the necklace and below her ear. Her own heart raced already and her breath hitched as she heard Isabela's sharp inhale.

"No, not the least little bit," Bethany whispered in her ear, stretching out the sounds in a way that showed Isabela how well she paid attention during their times together. She reveled a little in the way she could hear the other woman's breath flutter, how she noticed when her skin warmed to the touch, and her fingers slowed against her skin.

"Oh, how you wound me." Her words were meant playfully, Bethany knew, but she heard more in their tone than she thought Isabela had intended.

She let their hands separate and she moved, knee lifting over so she could lay down, stretched at Isabela's side. Her hand reached up to turn Isabela's cheek so she could kiss her as she settled herself against the other woman.

"Shall I make it up to you then?" she asked in a whisper.

"Not today," Isabela said with a smile. "There's only so much time in a day, and I think I have a little making up of my own to do."


End file.
